Desirée Martín

PhD, Duke University; BA UC Berkeley

Desirée A. Martín is a scholar of Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x studies, with further interests in media studies, c20/21 American studies, U.S.-Mexico border studies, and California literatures. She is the author of Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture (Rutgers, 2013) and has published both critical essays and hybrid creative-critical pieces. Her current book project, Fake Latinidad: Making and Breaking Latina/o/x Identities, theorizes that the continually evolving identities of Latinx people are navigated through an interrogation of authenticity alongside an embrace of the inauthentic or fake, towards new understandings of Latinx identities and belonging. 

She is an LA native of the greater Mexican borderlands, which informs her theoretical and pedagogical practices.   
 

Publications:

Book:

      "Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture." Dec 2013, Rutgers University Press. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/borderlands-saints/9780813562339

Recent Articles, Book Chapters and Other Media:

 “’Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before’: Chicanx Musical Translation and Repetition,” Music In/As Literature, eds. Kelly Baron & Andrew DuBois, Lexington Books, forthcoming 2025

“Gloss: Maribel Bello, ‘[:micro borders para territorios alien o fake],’” Imagined Theatres:BorderS, Issue 8, October 2024 https://imaginedtheatres.com/borders/ 

“Translating the Eastside: Embodied Translation in Helena María Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came With Them,” MELUS, Vol 45, Issue 1, Spring 2020, pgs. 49-72 https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlaa002  

Awards and Honors:

• Outstanding Book Award for "Borderlands Saints", LASA Latino/a Studies Section, 2014.
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2001-2002)

Email:  dmartín@ucdavis.edu